 STORM OVERWARLOCK by Andre Norton This is the LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis Forward from the book jacket cover. The Throne Task Force got to Tarrant Survey Camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning. And with a deadly precision, which argued that the aliens had fully reconordered and prepared that attack. Ice-shearing lances of energy laced back and forth across the base with methodical accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red bold spells, nothing human would be left alive down there. And so, Shan Lante, most menial of the terrans attached to the camp on the planet Warlock, was left alone and weaponless in the strange hostile world. The human prey of the aliens from space and the aliens on the ground alike. This concludes the jacket cover. STORM OVERWARLOCK by Andre Norton This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis STORM OVERWARLOCK by Andre Norton Chapter 1 Disaster The Throne Task Force struck the Tarrant Survey Camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning. And with a deadly precision, which argued that the aliens had fully reconordered and prepared that attack. Ice-shearing lances of energy laced back and forth across the base with methodical accuracy. And a single-carrying witness, flattened on a ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red bold spells, nothing human would be left alive down there. His teeth closed hard upon the thick stuff of the sleeve covering his thin poor arm, and in his throat a stream of tear and rage was still born. More than caution kept him pinned on that narrow shelf of rock, watching that holocaust below. Sean Landtree could not force himself to move. The sheer ruthlessness of the Throg move-in left him momentarily weak. To listen to a tale of Throgs in action and to be an eyewitness to such action were two vastly different things. He shivered in spite of the warmth of the Survey Corps uniform. To get his sighted none of the aliens, only their plate-shaped pliers. They would stay aloft until their long-range weapon cleared out all opposition. But how had they been able to make such a complete annihilation of the Terran force? The last report had placed the nearest Throg nest at least two systems away from Warlock, and a patrol lane had been drawn around the Sears system the minute that Survey had marked its second planet ready for colonization. Somehow the Beatles had slipped through that supposedly tight cordon and would now consolidate their gains with their usual speed at rooting. First an energy attack to finish the small Terran force, then they would simply take over. A month later, or maybe two months, and they could not have done it. The Grids would have been up and any Throg ship venturing into Warlock's amber-tinted sky would abruptly cease to be. In the race for survival as a galactic power, Terra had that one small edge over the swarms of the enemy. They need to only stake out their newfound world and get the Grids assembled on this surface, then that planet would be locked to the Beatles. The critical period was between the first discovery of a suitable colony world and the erection of grid control. The race in the past had been lost during that time lag, if that Warlock was lost now. Throgs and Terrans. For more than a century now, planet time, they had been fighting their queer twisted war among the stars. Terrans hunted worlds for colonization. The old hunger for land of their own driving men from the overpopulated worlds out of Seoul's system to the far stars. Those worlds, barren of intelligent native life, opened to settlers, were none too many, and widely scattered. Perhaps half a dozen were found in a quarter century, and of that six, maybe only one was suitable for human life without any costly and lengthy adaption of man or world. Warlock was one of the lucky finds which came so seldom. Throgs were predators, living on the loot they gardened, and yet mankind had not been able to discover whether they did indeed swarm from any homeworld. Perhaps they lived eternally on board their plate ships with no permanent base, forced into a wandering life by the destruction of the planet on which they had originally been spawned. But they were raiders now, laying waste-defensible squirrels, picking up the wealth of shattered cities in which no native life remained. And their hidden temporary bases were looped about the galaxy, their needs for worlds with an atmosphere similar to terraces as necessary as that of man. For in spite of their grotesque, insectile bodies, their holy alien minds, the Throgs were warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing creatures. After the first few places that early in Terran explorers had endeavored to promote a truce between the species, only to discover that between Throg and man, there appeared to be no meeting ground at all. Total differences of metal processes producing insurmountable misunderstanding. There was simply no point of communication. So the Terrans had suffered one smarting defeat after another until they perfected the grit. And now the colonies were safe, at least when time worked in their favor. It had not on warlock. The last vivid lasher red cracked over the huddle of domes in the valley. Sean blank, half blinded by that glare. His jaws ate as he unclenched his teeth. That was the finish. Breathing raggedly, he raised his head, beginning to realize that he was the only one of his kind left alive on a non- to hospitable world controlled by enemies without shelter or supplies. He heads back into the narrow cliff which was the entrance to the ledge. As a representative of his species, he was not impressed. And now with those shutters he could not master, shaking his thin body, he looked even smaller and more vulnerable. Sean drew his knees up close under his chin. The hood of his wisdom's jacket was pushed back in spite of the chill of the morning. And he wiped the back of his hand across his lips and pushed him in an oddly childish gesture. None of the men below who had been alive only minutes earlier had been close friends of his. Sean had never known anyone but acquaintances in his short roving life. Most people had ignored him completely except to give orders. And one or two had been actively malicious. Like Garth Vorvald, Sean grimaced at a certain recent memory and then that grimace faded into wonder. Young Thorvald hadn't purposefully tried to get Sean into trouble by opening the Wolverine's cage. Sean wouldn't be here now, alive and safe for a time. He'd had been down there with the others. The Wolverines, for the first time since Sean had heard the crackle of the frog attack, he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the survey team, Sean Lanteen had been the least important. The dirty tedious cleanup jobs, the dull routines which required no technical training, but which had to be performed to keep the camp functioning comfortably, those had been his portion. And he had accepted that status willingly just to have a chance to be included among survey personnel. Not that he had the slightest hope of climbing up to even an SE3 rating in the circus. Part of those menial activities had been to clean the animal cages. And there Sean Lanteen had found something new, something so absorbing that most of the tiring dull labor had ceased to exist except as tasked to finish before he could return to the fascination of the animal runs. Survey teams and early discovered the advantage of using mutated and highly trained terran animals as assistants in the exploration of strange worlds. From the biological laboratories and breeding farms on Terra came a trickle of specialized HD camp to accompany man into space. Some were fighters, silent, more deadly than weapons, a man wore at his belt or carried in his hands. Some were keener eyes, keener noses, keener scouts than the humankind could produce. Read for intelligence, for size, for adaptability to alien conditions, the animal explorers from Terra were prized. Wolverines, the ancient devils of the Northland on Terra, were being tried for the first time on Warlock. Their caution, a quality highly developed in their breed, made them testers for new territories. Able to tackle in battle an animal three times their size, they should be added protection for the man they accompanied into the wilderness. And they're wide ranging, their ability to climb and swim, and above all, their curiosity were assets. Sean had begun contact by cleaning their cages. He ended captivated by these miniature bears with long, bushy tails. And to his unbounded delight, the attraction was mutual. Alone to Taggy and Toggy, he was a person, an important person. Those teeth which could tear flesh into ragged strips, nipped gently at his fingers, closed without any pressure on arm, even on nose and chin, in what was the ultimate caress of their kind. Since they were escaped artists of no mean ability, twice he had had to track and lead them back to camp from fouries of their own devising. But the second time, he had been caught by Fatacar, the chief of animal control, before he could lock up the delinquents. And the memory of the resulting interview still had the power to make him flush with impotent anger. Sean's explanation had been contemptuously rustricized and he had been delivered an ultimatum. If his carelessness occurred again, he would be sent back on the next supply ship to be dismissed without an official sign off on his work record. Thus locked out of even the lowest level of survey for the rest of his life. That was why Garth Travolse, act of the night before, had made Sean brave the unknown darkness of Warlock alone when he had discovered that the test animals were gone. He had to locate and return them before Fatacar made his morning inspection. Garth Travolse's attempt to get him into bad trouble has saved his life. Sean cowered back, striving to make his little body as small as possible. One of the frog flyers appeared silently out of the misty amber of the morning sky, hovering over the silent camp. The aliens were coming in to inspect the site of their victory. And the safest place for any tear now was as far from the vicinity of those silent domes as he could give. Sean's slight body was an asset as he wedged through the narrow mouth of a cleft and so back into the cliff wall. The climb before him he knew in part, but this was a path the Wolverines had followed on their two other escapes. A few moments of tricky scrambling, and he was out in a cup-like depression, choked with brush covered with the purple foliage of Warlock. On the other side of that was a small cut to a sloping hillside giving on another valley. Not as wide as that in which the camp stood, but one will provided with cover in the way of trees and high-growing bushes. A light wind pushed him on the trees and twice Sean heard the harsh, rasping call of a clack-clack, one of the bat-like, leather-winged flyers that layered in pits along cliff walls. That present snap of two-tone complaint suggested that the land was empty of strangers. For the clack-clacks, they were ferociously and loudly resented encroachment on their chosen hunting territory. Sean hesitated. He was driven by the urge to put as much distance between him and the landing-thrown ship as he could, but to arouse the attention of inquisitive clack-clacks was asking for trouble. Perhaps it would be best to keep on along the top of the cliff rather than risk a descent to take cover in the valley of the flyer's patrol. A patch of dust, sheltered by a two-shaped projection of rock, gave the Terran his first proof that Toggy and his mate had preceded him. For printed firmly there was a familiar palm-mark of a wolverine. Sean began to hope that both animals had taken to cover in the wilderness ahead. He lit dry lips. Having left secretly without any emergency pack, he had no canteen. And now Sean inventoried his scant possessions. A field kit, heavy-duty clothing, a short- hooded jacket with attached mittens, the breastmarked with the survey insignia. His belt supported a sheath stunner and bushknife, and seam pockets held three credit tokens, a twist of wire intended to reinforce the latch of the wolverine cage, a packet of Bravo tablets, two identity and work cards, and a length of cord. No rations saved the Bravo's. No extra charge for his stunner, but he did have, waiting down a loop on the jacket, a small atomic torch. The path he followed entered abruptly in a cliff drop, and Sean made a face at the odor rising from below, even though that scent meant he could climb down to the valley floor here without fearing any plaque-like attention. Chemical fumes from a mineral spring funneled against the wall, warding off any nesting in this section. Sean drew up the hood of his jacket and snapped the transparent face mask into place. He must get away, then find food, water, a hiding place. That will to live, which had made Sean Lante fight innumerable battles in the past was in command, racing him with a stubborn determination. The fumes furled up and a small taste about his waist, but he showed on, heading for the open valley and cleaner air. That sixly lavender vegetation bordering the stream deepened in color to the normal purple-green, and then he was in a grove of trees. The branches pointed skyward at sharp angles to the rust-red trunks. A small skitterer versed from moss about a ground covering, giving an alarm squeak, skimming out of sight as suddenly a jadet appeared. Sean squeezed between two trees and then paused. The trunk of the larger, what deeply scored, was scratches dripping viscous gobs of sap, a sap which was a bright broth of scarlet. Taggy had left his mark here and not too long ago. The soft carpet of moss showed no palm arch, but he thought he knew the goal of the animals, a lake down valley. Sean was beginning to plan now. The throgs had not blasted the Terran camp out of existence. They had only made sure of the death of its occupiers, which meant they must have some use for the insulation. For the general loot of a survey field camp would be relatively worthless to those who picked over the treasure of entire cities elsewhere. Why? What did the throgs want? And would the alien invaders continue to occupy the domes for long? Sean did not realize what had happened to him since that shock of ruthless attacks. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his own to scratch a living, a borderline existence of a living on the dust of tire, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from survey rations, he was not quite so scrawny anymore. His formal education was close to zero. His informal and off-center schooling vast. And that particular toughening process, which had been working on him for years, now aided in his speedy adaptation to a new set of facts, formidable ones. He was alone on a strange and perhaps hostile world. Water, food, safe shelter, these were important now. And once again, away from the ordered round of the camp where he had been ruled by the desires and requirements of others, he was thinking, planning in freedom. Later, his hand went to the butt of his stunner. Perhaps later, he might just find a weight of extravagant accounting from the beetle-facers, too. For the present, he would have to keep away from the throats, which meant well away from the camp. A fleck of green showed through the amethyst foliage before him, the lake. Shan wiggled through a last-boost barrier and stood to look out over that surface. A sleek brown head bobbed up. Shan put fingers to his mouth and whistled. The head turned, black-button eyes regarded him. Short legs began to turn water. To his gratification, the swimmer was obeying his summons. Taggy came ashore, pausing on the fine gray sand of the verge to shake himself vigorously. Then the Wolverine came up slope at a clumsy gallop to Shan. With an unknown feeling swelling inside him, the tear went down on both knees, bearing both hands in the coarse-brown fur, warming to the uproarious welcome Taggy gave him. Taggy, Shan asked if the other could answer. He gazed back to the lake, but Taggy's mate was nowhere in sight. The blunt head under his head swung around. Black-button nose pointed north. Shan had never been sure to tell intelligence as mankind measured intelligence the Wolverine's worth. He had come to suspect that Batacar and the other experts had underrated them and that both beasts understood more than they were given credit for. Now he followed an experiment of his own, one he had had a chance to try only a few times before and never at length. Pressing his palm flat on Taggy's head, Shan thought of troves and of their attack, trying to rouse in the animal a corresponding reaction to his own horror and anger. And Taggy responded. A mutter became a growl, teeth gleamed. Those brutal teeth have a carnival to whom they were weapons of aggression. Danger, Shan thought. Danger, then he raised his hand and the Wolverine shuffled off, heading north. The man followed. They discovered Taggy busy in a small cove where a jagged tangle of drift made a map dating from the last high water period. She was finishing a hardy breakfast. The remains of a water rat, being buried thriftly against future need after the instincts of her kind. When she was done, she came to Shan inquire a plane to read in her eyes. There was water here and good hunting, but the site was too close to the throats. Let one of their exploring fliers sight them and the little group was finished. Better cover. That's what the three fugitives must have. Shan scowled, not at Taggy, but at the landscape. He was tired and hungry, but he must keep on going. A stream fed into the cove from the west, a guide of sorts. With very little knowledge of the countryside, Shan was inclined to follow that. Overhead, the sun made its usual golden haze of the sky. They fly to vivid green streaks, mark the block of lake ducks coming for a morning feeding. Lake duck was good eating, but Shan had no time to hunt one now. Taggy started down the bank of the stream, Taggy behind her. He said they had caught his choice subtly through some undefined metal contact or they had already picked that road on their own. Shan's attention was caught by a piece of the drift. He twisted the length free and had his first weapon of his own manufacturer, a cloak. Using it to hold back a low-sweeping rent, he followed the Wolverines. Within the half hour, he had breakfast too, a pair of limp skitterers. The long hind feet laced together with a thong of grass hung from his belt. They were not particularly good eating, but they were meat and acceptable. The three, Man and Wolverines, made their way up the stream to the valley wall and threw a feeder ravine into the larger space beyond. There, where the stream was born at the foot of a falls, they made their first camp. Judging that the morning haze would veil any smoke. Shan built a pocket-sized fire. He seared rather than roasted the skitterers after he had made an awkward and messy business of skinning them and tore the meat from the delicate bones in greedy mouthfuls. The Wolverines lay side-by-side on the gravel, nine again, raising a head, alertly, to test the scent on the air or gaze into the distance. Taggy made a warning sound deep in the throat. Shan tossed handfuls of sand over the dying fire. He had only time to fling himself face-down, hoping to grab and weathered cloths of his uniform, faded into the color of the earth on which he lay every muscle tense. A shadow swung across the hillside. Shan's shoulders hunched and he cowered again. That terror he had known on the ledge was back in full force as he waited for the beam to lick at him as it had earlier at his fellow's. The shrugs were on the hunch. This concludes chapter one, Storm Over Warlock. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton. Chapter two, Death of a Ship. That sigh of displaced air was not as loud as a breeze, but it echoed monstrously in Shan's ears. He could not believe any luck as that sound grew finger, drew a wave into the valley he had just left. With infinite caution, he raised his head from his arm, still hardly able to accept the fact that he had not been sighted, that the shrugs and their flier were gone. But that black plate was spinning out into the sun haze. One of the Beatles might have suspected that there were Terran fugitives and ordered a routine patrol. After all, how could the aliens know that they had caught all but one of the survey party in camp? Though with all the Terran scout flitters grounded on the field, the men dead in their bones, the surprise would seem to be complete. As Shan moved, Taggy and Toggy came to life also. They had gone to earth with speed, and the man was sure that both beasts had sensed danger. Not for the first time, he knew a burning desire for the formal education he had never had. In camp, he had listened, dragging out routine jobs in order to overhear reports, and a small talk of specialists keen on their own particular hobbies. But so much of the information Shan had just picked up to store in a retentive memory, he had not understood and could not fit together. It had been as if he were trying to solve some highly important puzzle with at least a quarter of the necessary pieces missing or with unrelated bits from others in her mix. How much control did a trained animal scout have over his furred or feathered assistance? And was part of that mastery, a middle report built up between man and animal. How well would the Wolverines obey him now? Especially when they would not return to camp, were cages stood waiting as symbols of human authority? Wouldn't they trek into the wilderness bring about a revolt for complete freedom? If Shan could depend upon the animals, it would mean a great deal. Not only would their superior hunting ability provide all three with food, but the scouting census, so much keener than his, might erect a slender wall between life and death. Few large native beasts had been discovered on warlock by the Terran explorers. And of those four or five different species, none had proved hostile if unprovoked. But that did not mean that somewhere back in the wildlands into which Shan was heading, there were no here to for unknown. Perhaps Slyre and as vicious as a Wolverine when they were aroused to rage. Then there were the dreams, which had afforded the prime source of camp discussion and dispute. Shan rushed horse sand from his boots and thought about the dreams. Did they or did they not exist? You could start an argument anytime by making a definite statement for or against the particular sort of dreaming reported by the first scout to set ship on this world. The Sire system of which warlock was the second of three planets had first been scouted four years ago by one of those explorers traveling solo in survey service. Everyone knew that the first in scouts were a weird breed, almost a mutation of Terran's stuff. The reports were rife with strange observations. So an alarming one concerning Sears, a yellow sun such as soul and our three planets was not so rare, which the world nearest in orbit to Sears was too hot for human occupancy without drastic and too costly world changing. Wizard, the third out from the sun was mostly bare rock and highly poisonous water. But warlock swinging through space between two forbidding neighbors seemed to be just what the settlement board ordered. Then the survey scout, even in the cocoon safety of his well-armed ship, began to dream. And from those dreams, a whore of the apparently empty world developed until he fled the planet to preserve his sanity. There had been a second visit to warlock in check. Worlds so well adapted to human immigration could not be lightly thrown away. And this time there was a negative report, no trace of dreams, no registration of any outside influence on the delicate and complicated equipment the ship carried. So the survey team had been dispatched to prepare for the coming of the first pioneers. And none of them had dreamed either, at least no more than the ordinary dreams all men accepted. Only there were those who pointed out that the seasons had changed between the first and second visits to warlock. That first scout had planted it in summer. His successors had come in fall and winter. They argued that the final release of the world for settlement should not be given until the full year on warlock had been sampled. But the pressure of immigrant control had forced their hands. That and the fear of just what had eventually happened. An attack from the throaks. So they had speeded up the process of declaring warlock open. Only Ragnar Thurvold had protested that decision up to the last and had gone back to headquarters on the supply ship a month ago to make a last appeal for a more careful study. Sean stopped rushing the sand from the tough fabric above his knee. Ragnar Thurvold, he remembered back to the port landing apron on another world. Remembered with a sense of loss he could not define. That had been about the second biggest day of his short life. The biggest had come earlier when they had actually allowed him to sign on for survey duty. He had tumbled off the cross-continent cargo carrier. His kit, a very meager kit, slung over his thin shoulder, a hot eagerness expanding inside him until he thought that he could not continue to throttle down that wild happiness. There was a weighty starship, and he, Sean Lanty, from the doves of tears, without any influence or schooling, was going to blast off in her wearing the brown-green uniform of survey. Then he had hesitated uncertainly, had not quite dared crossed a few feet of apron lying between him and that compact group wearing the same uniform with a slight difference that of service bars and completion badges and rank insignia, with the unconscious self-assurance of men who had done this many times before. But after a moment, that whole group had become in his own shy appraisal, just a background for one man. Sean had never before known in his peace and limited childhood, his lost boyhood, anyone who aroused in him, he or worship. But he could not have put a name to the new emotion that added so suddenly to his burning desire to make good. Not only to hold a small niche in survey, which he had already so painfully achieved, but to climb until he could stand so in such a group talking easily to that tall man. His uncovered head, bronze-yellow in the sunlight, his cool gray eyes pale in his brown face. Not that any of those wild dreams born in that minute or two had been realized in the ensuing months. Probably those dreams have always been as wild as the ones reported by the first scout on Warlock. Sean Grinn, wily now at the short period of childhood's hope and have confidence that he could do big things. Only one Thorwald had ever noticed Sean's existence in the survey camp and that had been garious. Garth Thorwald, a far less impressive, one could say smudged, copy of his brother. Swaggering with an arrogance Ragnar never showed. Garth was a cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Sean realize the unbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer to be. He had appeared to know right from the first meeting just how to make Sean's life a mystery. Now, in the split of valley well away from the Dome, Sean's fist balled. He pounded them against the earth in a way he had so often hoped to plant them on Garth's smoothly handsome face, his well muscled body. One didn't survive the dunks of tear without learning how to use fists and boots and enlisted tricks they didn't teach in any academy. He had always been sure that he could take Garth if they mixed it up. But if he had loosed the tight reign he had kept on his temper and offered that challenge, he would have lost his chance with survey. Garth had proved himself able to talk his way out of any scrape, even minor derelictions of duty, and he far outranked Sean. The laborer from tear had had to swallow all that the other could dish out and hope that on his next assignment he would not be a member of young Thorwald's team. Though because of Garth's Thorwald, Sean's toll of black record marks had mounted dangerously high and each day the chance for any more duty tears had grown dimmer. Sean laughed and the sound was ugly. That was one thing he didn't have to worry about any longer. There would be no other assignments for him. The throat just seemed to that. And Garth, well, there would never be a showdown between them now. When they stood up, the dog's ship had disappeared, they could push on. He found a break in the cliff wall which was climbable and he coked the Wolverines after him. When they stood on the heights from which the falls tumbled, Toggy and Toggy rubbed against him, cried for his attention. They too appeared to need the reassurance they got from a contact with him, for they were also fugitives on this alien world. They were only representatives of their kind. Since he did not have any definite goal and view, Sam continued to be guided by the strength, following his wanderings across the plateau. The sun was warm, so he carried his jacket slung across one shoulder. Toggy and Toggy ranged their heads, twice catching skitters which they devired ferociously. A shadow on a sun-blaked rock set the tarant's kidding for cover until he saw that it was cast by one of the questing falcons from the upper peaks. But that shook his confidence. So he again sought cover with shame that his own carelessness. In the late afternoon, he reached the far end of the plateau. Based a climb through peaks with steel-bored cones of snow, now titted a soft peach by the sun. Sam studied that possible path and distrusted his own powers to take it without proper equipment or supplies. He must turn either north or south, though he would then have to abandon and ensure water supply in the stream. Tonight, he would camp where he was. He had not realized how tired he was until he found a likely half cave in the mountain wall and crawled in. There was too much danger in fire here. He would have to do without that first comfort of his kind. Luckily, the wolverines squeezed in beside him to fill the hole with the warm-furned bodies sandwiching him, shan-dose, aloak, and dozed again listening to night sounds. The screams, cries, punning calls of the warlocked wiles. Now and again, one of the wolverines whined and moved uneasily. Fingers of sun picked at shan through a shaft among the rocks, striking his eyes. He moved, blinked, blarely awake, unable for the first few seconds to understand why the smooth plaster wall of his bunk had become rough-red stone. Then he remembered. He was alone, and he threw himself frantically out of the cave, afraid the wolverines had wandered off. Only both animals were busy clawing under a boulder, with a steady persistence, and argued there was a purpose behind that effort. A sharp sting on the back of one hand made that purpose only too clear to shan, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of the excavation. They had bound that earth-loss whirl and were hunting grubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants to bitter resentment. Shan faced the problem of his own request. He had had the immunity shot given to all members of the team, and he had eaten game brought in by exploring parties and label safe. But how long he could keep to the varieties of native food he knew was uncertain. Sooner or later, he must experiment for himself. Already he drank the stream water without the aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no ill results from that necessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested peace, but instead he chanced upon another water inhabitant which had crawled up on land for some obscure purpose of its own. It was a sluggish-scaled thing an easy victim to his club with thinned, weak legs it could project at will from a fin and armor-plated body. Shan offered the head and guts to Togi who had abandoned the washed nest. She sniffed in careful investigation and then gulped. He felt the small fire and seared the firm, greenish flesh. The taste was flat, lacking salt, but the food eased his emptiness. In Hardin, he started south hoping to find water sometime during the morning. By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring, and a Wolverine just brought down a slender-legged animal whose coat was close and shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller than a chair and deer, its head bore not horns but a ridge of stiffened hair rising in a point some 12 inches above the skull-dome. Shan hangled off some ragged stakes while the Wolverine speached it in earnest, carefully burying the head afterward. It was when Shan knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught the clamor of the clack-clacks. He had seen or heard nothing of the flyers since he had left the Lake Valley. But from the noise now rising in an ear-spitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony nearby and that the inhabitants were thoroughly around. He crept on his hands and knees to nearby brush cover, heading toward the source of that outburst. Yet the clacks were announcing a throgs-scouting party he wanted to know it. Flying flat with branches forming a screen over him, the tear engaged out on a stretch of grassland which sloped at a fairly steep angle to the south and which must lead to a portion of countryside well below the level he was now traversing. The clack-clacks were skimming back and forth, streaking their staccato war cries. Following the erratic dashes of the flight formation, Shan decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level out of his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, should the disturbance not near him? Prudence dictated that, yet still he hesitated. He had no desire to travel north or to try and scale the mountains. No, south was his best path and he should be very sure that route was closed before he retreated. Since any additional fuss the clack-clacks might make on sighting him would be undistinguished in their now general clamor, the tyrant crawled on to where tall grass provided a screen at the top of the slope. There he stopped short, his hand sneaking into the earth in sudden breaking action. Below, the ground steamed from the rocket flareback, grasses burned away from the fins of a small scout ship. But even as Shan rose to one knee, his shadow welcomed choked in his soaps. One of those fins sank, canning the ship crookedly, preventing any new takeoff. And over the crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate of a shrug flare. The shrugged ship came up in a burst of speed and Shan waited tensely for some counter move from the scout. Those small speedy-tearing ships were prudently provided with weapons triply deadly in proportion to their size. He was sure that the tyrant's ship could hold its own against the shrug, even eliminate the enemy. But there was no fire from the sliding pencil of the scout. The shrug circled whirling, obviously expecting a trap. Twice it darted back in the direction from which it had come. As it returned from its second retreat, another of its kind showed, a black coin dot against the amber of the sky. Shan felt sick inside. Now the tyrant's scout had lost any advantage and perhaps all hope. The shrugs could box the other in, cut the down ship to pieces with their energy beams. He wanted to crawl away and not witness this last disaster for his kind. But some stubborn core of will kept him where he was. The shrugs began to circle, while beneath them the flock of clack-clack screamed and died at the sliding nose of the tyrant's ship. Then that same slicing energy he had watched quarter of the camp snap from the far plate across the stricken scout. The man who had piloted this hurt, if not dead already, with might account for the lack of defense, must have fallen victim to that. But the shrug was going to make very sure. The second flare halted, remaining poise long enough to unleash a second bolt. Dashling and he watched the eyes and broadcasting a vibration to make Shan skin crawl when the first faint ripple reached his outlook post. What happened then, the overconfident shrug was not prepared to take? Shan cried out, burying his face on his arm as pinwheels of scarlet light blotted out normal sight. There was an explosion, a deafening blast. He cowered, blind, unable to hear. Then rubbing at his eyes, he tried to see what had happened. Through watery blurs, he made out the shrug's ship, not swinging now in serene indifference to warlock's gravity, but whirling in over in across the sky as might at least tossed in a gust of wind. His rim caught against a rust-red cliff and rebounded and crumbled. Then it came down, smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which laid the mangled wreckage of the Terran ship. The disabled scout pilot must have played a last desperate game, making up his ship made for a trap. The Terran had taken one shrug with him. Shan rubbed again at his eyes, just barely able to catch a glimpse of the second ship placing away westward. Perhaps it was only his impaired sight, but it appeared to him that the shrug followed an erratic path, either as if the pirate feared to be caught by a second shot or because that ship had also suffered some injury. As the smoke reached up from the valley, making Shan reach and call, there could be no survivor from the Terran scout, and he did not believe that any shrug had lived crawl-free of the Cromo plate, but there would be other beetles forming here soon. They were not there to leave the scene unsearched. He wondered about that scout. Had the pilot been aiming for the survey camp, the absence of any rider being from there warning him off so that he made the detour which brought him here. Or had the shrug tried to blast the Terran ship in the upper atmosphere, crippling it, making this a forced landing. But at least this battle had cost the shrug, settling a small portion of the Terran depth for the lost camp. The length of time between Shan's sighting of the grounded ship and the attack by the shrug had been so short that he had not really developed any strong hope of rescue to be destroyed by the end of the crippled ship. On the other hand, seeing the shrug take a beating, had exploded his subconscious acceptance of their superiority. He might not have even the resources of a damaged scout at his command, but he did have Taggy, Koggy, and his own brain. Since he was spated to permanent exile on Warlock, there might just be some way to make the beetles pay for that. He licked his lips. Real action against the aliens would take a lot of planning. Shan would have to know more about what made a shrug a shrug, more than all the wild stories he had heard over the years. There had to be some way a Terran could move effectively against a beetle head. And he added a lot of time, maybe the rest of his life to work out a few answers. That shrug's ship flying wrecked at the foot of the cliff. Perhaps he could do a little investigating before any rescue squad arrived. Shan decided to just a move as was the try and whistled to the Wolverines. This concludes Chapter 2. Storm Over Warlock, Chapter 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock, Chapter 3. To close ranks. Shan made his way at an angle to avoid the smoking pit cradling the wreckage of the Terran ship. There were no signs of life about the shrug plate as he approached. A quarter of a spoke was telescope back into the rest. And surely none of the aliens could have survived such a smash. Tough as they were recruited to be with those horny carcasses serving them in place of more vulnerable human skin. He snipped. There was a notches odor heavy on the morning air, one which would make a lasting impression on any human nose. The port door in the black ship stood open, perhaps having burst in the impact against the cliff. Shan had almost reached it when a crackle of chain lightning beat across the ground before him. Turning the edge of the buckle entrance, panel read, Shan dropped to the ground, drawing his stunner. Knowing at the same moment that such a weapon was as bad as much use in meeting a blaster, as a straw wand would be to ward off a blazing cold. A chill numbness held him as he waited for a second blast to charge the flesh between his shoulders. So there had been a trove survivor after all. But as moments passed and the trove did not move in to make an easy kill, Shan collected his wits. Only one shot was a beetle injured, unable to make sure of even an almost defenseless prey. The trove seldom took prisoners. When they did, the Terran's lips tightened. He worked his hand under his prone body, feeling for the health of his knife. With that, he could speedily remove himself from the status of trove prisoner, and he would do it gladly if there was no hope of escape. Had there been only one charge left in that blaster, Shan could make half a dozen guesses as to why the other had made no move. But that shot had come from behind him, and he dared not turn his head or otherwise make an effort to see what the other might be doing. Was it only his imagination or had that stench grown stronger during the last few seconds? Could the trove be creeping up on him? Shan strained his ears, trying to catch some sound he could interpret. The few clack-clacks that had survived the blast above the ship were shrieking overhead, and Shan made one attempt at counterattacks. He whistled the Wolverine's call. The pair had not been too willing to follow him down into this valley, and they had avoided the crater at a very wide circle. But if they would obey him now, he just might have a chance. There, that had been a sound, and the smell was stronger. The trove must be coming to him, again Shan whistled, holding in his mind his hatred for the beetle head. The need for finishing off that alien that the animals could pick either thoughts or emotions out of their human companion, this was a time for him to get those unspoken half-orders across. Shan slammed his hand hard against the ground, sent his body rolling, his center up and ready. And now he could see that grotesque thing, swaying weakly back and forth on his thin legs, yet holding a blaster, bringing that weapon up to center it on him. The trove was hunched over, and perhaps Tatagi presented the outline of some four-footed creature to be hunted, for the Wolverine male spraying for the horned shell's shoulders. Under that impact, that trove sagged forward, but Tatagi outraged at the nature of the creature he had attacked, squalled and retreated. Shan had his precious seconds of distraction. He fired, the core of the stun beam striking full into the flat desh of the alien's face. That bolt, which would have shocked a mammal into insensibility, only slowed the trove. Shan rolled again, gaining a temporary cover behind direct ship. He squirmed under a metal-hot enough to scorch his jacket and saw the reflection of a second blaster shot, which had been fired seconds late. Now the trove had him tied down, but to get at the Taren, the alien would have to show himself, and Shan had one chance in fifty, which was better than that of three minutes ago when the odds had been set at one in a hundred. He knew that he could not press the Wolverine's in again. Tatagi's distaste was too manifest. Shan had been lucky that the animal had made one abortive attack. Perhaps the Taren's escape and Tatagi's action had made the alien reckless. Shan had no clue to the thinking process of the non-human, and now the trove staggered around the end of the plate, his digits which were closer to claws and fingers, fumbling with his weapon. The Taren snapped another shot from his stunner, hoping to slow the enemy down, but he was trapped. If he turned to climb the cliff at his back, the beetle head could easily pick him off. A rock curled from the heights above, striking with deadly accuracy on the dome, hairless head of the trove. His armored body crashed forward, struck against the ship, and rebounded to the ground. Shan darted forward to seize the blaster, kicking loose the claws with steel grass fins. Before he flattened back to the cliff, the strange weapon over his arm, his heart beating wildly. The rock had not bounded down the mountainside by chance. It had been hurled with intent and aimed carefully at his target, and no trove would kill one of his fellows, or would he? Suppose orders had been issued to take a Taren prisoner and the trove by the ship had disobeyed. Then why a rock and not a blaster bolt? Shan edged along until the up-slanted broken side of the trove flyer provided him with protection from an overhead attack. Under that shelter, he waited for the next move from its unknown rescuer. The clack-placks wheeled closer to Earth. One lip globally on the carapace of the inert trove, shuffling ungainly along that horny ridge. Cradling the blaster, the Taren continued to wait. His patience was rewarded when that investigating clack-plack took off, uttering an inner-age snap or two. He heard what might be the scrape of boots across rocks, but that might also have come from horny skin meeting stone. Then the other must have lost his footing not too far above. Accompanied by a miniature landslide of stones and earth, a figure slid down several yards away. Shan waited in a half-crouch. He glued the blaster covering the man, now getting to his feet. There were no mistaking the familiar uniform or even the man. How Ragnar Thorvald had reached that particular spot on Warlock or why, Shan could not know. But that he was there, there was no denying. Shan hurried forward. It had been when he caught his first sight of Thorvald that he realized just how deep its unacknowledged loneliness had been. There were two Terrans on Warlock now, and he did not need to know why. But Thorvald was staring back at him with the blankness of non-recognition. Who are you to demand to kill something close to suspicion? That note in the other's voice wiped away a measure of Shan's confidence, threatening something which had flowered in him since he had struck into the wilderness on his own. Three words had reduced him again to Lanty, unskilled laborer. Lanty, I'm from the camp. Thorvald's eagerness was plain in his next question. How many of you got away? Where are the rest? He gazed past Shan at the plateau slope as if he expected to see the personnel of the camp sprout out of the cloak of grass along the verge. Just me and the Wolverines, Shan answered in a colorless voice. He cradled the blaster on his hip, turned a little away from the officer. You and the Wolverines, Thorvald was plainly startled. But where? How? The troves hit very early yesterday morning. They caught the rest in camp. The Wolverines had escaped from their cage, and I was out hunting them. He told his story boldly. You're sure about the rest? Thorvald had a thin steel of rage edging his voice. Almost Shan thought as if he could turn that village of rage against one Shan Lanty for being yet alive when more important men had not survived. I saw the attack from an upper rich, the younger man said, having been put on the defensive. Yet he had a right to be alive, hadn't he? Or did Thorvald believe that he should have gone running down to meet the beetle heads with his useless stunner? They used energy beams, didn't land until it was all over. I knew there was something wrong when the camp didn't answer our inter-atmosphere signal, Thorvald said absently. Then one of those platters jumped us on breaking orbit, and my pilot was killed. When we sat down on the automatics here, I had just time to rig a surprise for any trackers before I took to the hills. The blast got one of them, Shan pointed out. Yes, they had nicked the booster rocket. She wouldn't climb again, but they'll be back here to pick over the remains. Shan looked at the dead trog. Thanks for taking a hand. His tone was as chill as the others this time. I'm heading south. And he added silently, I intend to keep on that way. The trog attack had dissolved the pattern of the survey team. He didn't know Thorvald and the alliance. And he had been successfully on his own here since the camp had been overrun. South, Thorvald repeated. Well, that's as good a direction as any right now. But they were not united. Shan found the Wolverines impatiently coaxed and wheedled them into coming with them over a circuitous route which kept them away from both ships. Thorvald went up the cliff, swung down again, a supply bag slung over one shoulder. He stood watching as Shan brought the animals in. Then Thorvald's arms swept out, his fingers closing possessively about the barrel of the blaster. Shan's own hold on the weapon tightened and the force of the other's pull dragged him partly around. Let's have that. Why, Shan supposed, knows that because it had been the other's well-aimed rock which had put the trog out of commission permanently, the officer was going to claim their only spoils of war as personal booty and a hot resentment flowered in the Younger Man. We don't take that away from here. Thorvald made the weapon his with a quick twist. To Shan's other astonishment, the survey officer walked back to Neo beside the dead thrall. He worked the grip of the pistol under the alien's lax claws and inspected the result with the care of one, arranging a special and highly important display. Shan's protest became vocal. We'll need that. It'll do us far more good right where it is. Thorvald paused and then added, with impatience roughening his voice as if he disliked the need for making any explanations. There's no reason for us to advertise our being alive. If the trog's founded last or missing, let's start thinking and looking around. I want to have a breathing spell before I have to play quarry in one of their hunts. Put that way, his action did make sense, but Shan regretted the loss of an arm so superior to their own weapons. Now they could not loot the plate ship either. In silence, he turned and started to tread southward without waiting for Thorvald to catch up with him. Once away from the blasted area, the Wolverines ranged ahead at their clumsy gala, which covered ground at a surprising rate of speed. Shan knew that their curiosity made them scouts surpassing any human and that the men who followed would have ample warning of any danger to come. With that reference to his silent trail companion, he sent the animals toward another strip of woodland which would give them cover against the coming of any trog flyer. As the hours advanced, he began to cast a bount for a proper night camp. The woods ought to give them a usable sight. This is a waterwood, Thorvald said, wrecking the silence for the first time since they had left the wrecks. Shan knew that the other had knowledge, not only of the general countryside, but of exploring techniques which he himself did not possess. But to me, he reminded of that fact was an irritant rather than a reassurance. Without answering, the younger man boarded on to locate the water promise. The Wolverines found a small lake first and were splashed along his shore when the taverns caught up. Thorvald went to work, but to Shan's supplies, he did not unstrap the force-blade axe at his belt. Vending over his sapling, he founded the way with a stone at the green wood a few inches above the root line until he was able to break through the slender trunk. Shan drew his own knife and bent the tackle in another treelit when Thorvald stopped him with an order. Use a stone on that, the way I did. Shan could see no reason for such a laborious process. If Thorvald did not want to use his axe, that was no reason that Shan could not put his heavy belt knife to work. He hesitated, ready to set the blade to the outer bark of the tree. Look, again that impatient edge in the officer's tone. The need for explanations seeming to come very hard to the other. Sooner or later, the troves might just trace us here and find this camp. If so, they are not going to discover any traces to label us caring. But who else could we be, protected Shan? There is no native race on the world off. Thorvald tossed his improvised stone axe from hand to hand. But do the troves know that? The implications would be impossibilities and that idea struck home to Shan. Now he begins to understand what Thorvald might be planning. Now there is going to be a native race. Shan made a statement instead of a question and saw that the other was watching him with a new intentness. As if he had at last been recognized as a person instead of rank and file and very low rank at that. Survey personnel. There is going to be a native race, Thorvald affirmed. Shan recheased his knife and went into search upon beets for a suitable stone to use in his place. Even so, he made harder work of the clumsy chopping than Thorvald had. He worried at one sapling after another until his hands were skinned and his breath came in painful gusts from under aching ribs. Thorvald had gone on to another task, ripping the end of a long tough vine from just under the powdery surface of the thick leaf masses fallen in other years. With this, the officer lashed together the tops of the poles having planted their splintered butts in the ground so that he achieved a crudely conical erection. Leafy branches were woven back and forth through this framework with an entrance through which one might crawl on hands and knees left facing the lakeside. The shelter they completed was compact and efficient but totally unlike anything Shan had ever seen before. Certainly far removed from the domes of the camp. He said so, nursing his raw hands. An old form, Thorvald replied, native to a crimsy brace on Terra. Certainly the beetle heads haven't come across as like before. Are we going to stay here? Otherwise, it is pretty heavy work for one night's lodging. Thorvald tested the shelter with a sharp shake that might have been used whispered but the framework held. Stage dressing. No, we won't linger here, but it's evidence to support our play. Even a throg is indent enough to believe that natives would make a cross country trip without leaving evidence of their passing. Shan sat down with a sigh he made no effort to suppress. He had a vision of Thorvald traveling southward methodically erecting these huts here and there to confound throgs who might not ever chance upon them. But already the survey officer was busy with a new problem. We need weapons. We have our stunners, a force act, and our knives. Shan pointed out he did not add as he would have liked that they could have had a blaster. Native weapons, Thorvald countered with a usual snap. He went back to the beach and crawled about there, choosing and rejecting stones picked out of the gravel. Shan scooped out a small pit just before their hut and said about the making of a pocket-sized fire. He was hungry and looked longingly now and again to the supply bag Thorvald had brought with him. Did he rummage in that for rations? Sure the other would be carrying concentrates. Who taught you how to make a fire that way? Thorvald was back from the pond, a selection of round stones about the size of his fist resting between his chest and his forearm. His regulation, isn't it? Shan countered defensively. His regulation, Thorvald agreed. He sat down his stones in a row and then tossed a supply bag over to his companion. Too late to hunt tonight, but we'll have to go easy on those rations until we can get more. Where? Did Thorvald know of some supply cast they could raid? From the frogs, the other answered matter of factly. But they don't eat our kind of food. All the more reason for them to leave the camp supplies untouched. The camp? For the first time, Thorvald's lips curled in a shadow smile, which was neither joyous nor warming. A native raid on an invader's camp. What could be more natural? And we'd better make it soon. But how can we? To Shan, what the other proposed was sheer madness. There was once an agent service corps on Terra, Thorvald answered, which had a motto, something like this. The improbable we do at once. The impossible takes a little longer. What did you think we were going to do? Stoke a round out here in the bush and let the frogs claim warlock for one of their pirate bases without opposition. Since that was the only future Shan had visualized, he was ready enough to admit the truth. Only some shade of tone in the officer's voice kept him from saying so aloud. This concludes Chapter 3. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton. Chapter 4. This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraBox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton. Chapter 4. Sortie. Five days later, they came up from the south so that this time Shan's view of the Terran camp was from a different angle. At first sight, there had been little change in the general scene. The aliens were using the Terran dome shelters themselves. Even in the twilight, it was easy to pick out just landmarks as a calm dome with the shaft of a broadcaster spearing from its top and the greater bulk of the supply warehouse. Two of their small fliers down on the landing field tore of all materialized from the shadow. His voice, a thread of whisper. By Shan's side, the Wolverines were moving restlessly. Since Toggy's attack on the Throg, neither beast would venture near any site where they could sense the aliens. This was the nearest point to which the men could urge either animal, which was a disappointment, for the Wolverines would have been an excellent addition to the surprise Shortie they planned for tonight, having the danger for the men. Shan read his fingers across his coarse fur on the animal's shoulders, exerting a light pressure to signal them to wait. But he was not sure of their obedience. The foray was a crazy idea, and Shan wondered again why he had agreed to it. Yet, he had gone along with Thorvald, even suggesting a few modifications and additions of his own, such as the contents of the crude leaf sack now resting between his knees. Thorvald flittered away, seeking his own post to the west. Shan was still waiting for the other signal when there arose from the camp a sound to kill the flesh of the any listener, a whale which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being, or animal. Undiluting in ear torturing intensity, the cries sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself to waver up the scale again. The Wolverines went mad. Shan had witnessed their quick kills in the wilds, but this stark ferocity of spitting howling rage was new. They answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his hands. Yet, most animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to his right. Thorvald was ready to go, so Shan had no time to try and recall the animals. He fumbled for those balls of soaked moss in his leaf bags. The chemical smell from them blotted out that alien mustiness which the wind brought from the campsite. Shan readied the first stopping mess in his sling, stabbed his fire sparker at it, and had the ball a whorl for a toss almost in one continuous movement. The moss burst into flame as it curved out and fell. To a witness, it might have seemed that the missile materialized out of the air. The effect being better than Shan had hoped. A second ball for the sling sparked out, down. The first is smashed on the ground near the dome of the comms station. The force of impact flattening it into a round splatter of now furiously burning material. And his second carefully aimed at two feet beyond. Another whale tearing at the nerves. Shan made a third throw, a fourth. He had an audience now. In the light of those pools of fire, the throbs were scuttling back and forth, their hunts' bodies casting weird shadows on the dome walls. They were making efforts to douse the fires, but Shan knew from careful experimentation that once ignited the stuff he had skimmed on the lip of one of the hot springs would go on burning as long as a fraction of it visted substance remained unconfirmed. Now Thorvald had gone into action. A dog suddenly halted, struggled frantically, and toppled over into the edge of a fire splotch. Legs looped together by the coils of the curious weapon. Thorvald had put together on their first night of partnership. Three round stones of comparable weight had each been fastened at the end of a firing cord. And these cords united at a center point. Thorvald had demonstrated the effectiveness of his creation by bringing down one of the small deer of the grasslands. An animal normally pleased enough to feel safe from both human and animal pursuit. And those weighted ropes now trapped the throbs with the same efficiency. Having shot his last fireball, Sean ran swiftly to take up a new position. Downgrade and to the east of the dome. Here he put into action another of the primitive weapons Thorvald had devised. A spear hurled with a throwing stick, giving it double range and twice as powerful penetration power. The spears of cells were hardly more than crudely shaped length as wood. The points charred in the fire. Perhaps these missiles were either killed nor seriously wound, but more than one thudded home in a satisfactory fashion against the curving back carpenter or the softer front parts of a throne in a manner which certainly shook up and bruised the target. And one of Sean's victims went to the ground to lie kicking in a way which suggested he had been more than just bruised. Fireballs, spears. Thorvald had moved too. And now down into the somewhat frantic melee of the aroused camp fell a shower of slim weighted reeds, each provided with a clay ball head. The majority of those balls broke on landing as the terrenes had attended. Shoved through the beetle smell of the aliens sped the arid, throat-parching fumes of the hot spring water. Whether those fumes had the same effect on throg breathing apparatus as they did upon terrenes, the attackers could not tell. But they hoped that the environment would add to the general confusion. Sean began to face the whirling of his crude spears with more care, trying to place them with all the precision of aim he could muster. There was a limit to their amount of varied ammunition, although they had dedicated every waking moment of the past few days to manufacture and testing. Luckily, the enemy had had none of their energy beams at the dome. And so far, they had made no move to lift their fliers for retaliation blasts. But the throgs were pulling themselves in their order. Blaster fire cut the dust. Most of the aliens were now flat on the ground, sending a creeping line of fire into the perimeter of the camp area. A dark form moved between Sean and the nearest patch of burning moss. The terren raised their spears to the ready before he caught a wolf of a pungent scent emitted by a Wolverine hot with battle rage. He whistled coaxingly. With the throgs eager to blast any moving thing, the animals were in danger as they prowled about the scene. That blood had moved. Sean caught the glint of eyes in a bird's mask. It was either Toggy or his mate. Then a cup of mixed thrones and chemical scent from the camp must have reached the Wolverine. The animal coughed and fled westward, passing Sean. Had Thorwald had time and opportunity to make his plan raid on the supply dome? Time during such an employment was hard to measure and Sean could not be sure. He had to count the loud slowly as they had agreed. When he reached 100, he would begin his retreat. On 200, he was to run for it. His goal, the river a half a mile from the camp. The stream would take the fugitives to the sea where fjords cut the coastline into a rugged fringe offering a wealth of hiding places. Throgs seldom explored any territory on foot. And the venture into that maze would be putting themselves at the mercy of the Terrans they hunted. And their fliers could comb the air above such a rocky wilderness without results. Sean reached a count of 100. Twice a blaster bolt seemed scrammed within distance close enough to make him winch. But most of the fire carried well above his head. All of his spears were gone, safe for one he had kept, hoping for a last good target. One of the throgs who appeared to be directing the fire of the others was facing Sean's position. And on pure chance that he might knock out that leader, Sean chose him for his victim. The Terran had no illusions concerning his own marksmanship. The most he could hope for, he thought, was to have the primitive weapon thud home painfully on the other's armored hide. Perhaps if he were very lucky, he could knock the other from his clawed feet. But that chance which hovers over any battlefield turned in Sean's favor. At just the right moment, the throg stretched his head up from its usual hunch position, where the carversus extended over his wide shoulder to protect one of the alien's cube-runnable spots. The soft underside of his throat and the fire-shopping point of the spear went deep. Throgs were mute, or at least none of them had ever uttered a vocal sound to be reported by terrorists. This one did not cry out, but he staggered forward, four limbs up, clawed digit pulling at the wooden pin, transfixing his throat just under the mandible equipped jaw, holding his head at an unnatural angle. Without seeming to notice the others of his kind, the throg came on at a gambling run. Straight at Shan as if he could actually see through the dart and had marked down the taran for personal vengeance. There was something so uncanny about that forward dash that Shan retreated. At his hand-rope for the knife that he built, it moved he'll caught in a tangler weave and he struggled for balance. The wounded throg, still pulling at the spear shaft, protruding above the swelling barrel of his chest, pounded on. Shan sprawled backward and was caught in the elastic embrace of a bush, so he did not strike the ground. He fought the grip of prickly branches and kicked again solid earth under his feet. Then again he heard that piercing whale from the camp, as chilling as it had been the first time. Spurred that by that he won free, but he could not turn his back on the wounded throg, keeping rather a side-wise retreat. Already the alien agreed to dart beyond the rim of the camp. His progress now was marked by the crashing through low brush. Two of the throgs back on the firing line started up after their leader. Shan caught a whiff of their odor as a wounded alien advanced with the single mindedness of a robot. It would be best to head for the river. Tall grass twisted about the tavern's legs as he began to run. In spite of the gloom, he hesitated to cross that open space. At night warlock peculiar vegetation displayed a very alien attribute. Ten, twenty varieties of grass, plants, and trees emitted a wham phosphorescence, varying in degree, but affording each in aura of light. And the path before Shan now was dotted by splotches of that radiance. Not as brilliant as the chemical born flames, the attackers had kindled in the camp, but as quick to betray the unwary who passed within their dim circles. And there had never been any reason to believe that throg powers of sight were less than human. There was perhaps some evidence to the contrary. Shan crouched, charting the clumps ahead for a zigzag course which would take him to at least momentary safety in the riverbed. Perhaps a mile downstream was a transport that Terran's had cobbled together no earlier than this afternoon. A raft Thorvald had professed to believe would support them to the sea which lies on 50 Terran miles through the west. But now he had to cover that mile. The Wolverines, Thorvald, there was one lure which might draw the animals on to the roundable. Toggy had brought down a deer just before they had left the raft. And instead of allowing both bees to feast at leisure, Shan had leased a carcass to the shaky platform of wooden brush, putting it out to swing in the current, though still moored to the bank. Wolverines always cast that part of the keel which they did not consume at the first eating, usually burying it. He had hoped that to leave the carcass in such a way would draw both animals back to the raft when they were hungry. And they had not fed particularly well that day. Thorvald, well, the survey officer had made it very plain during the past five days of what Shan had come to look upon as an uneasy partnership, that he considered himself far abler to manage in the field while he had grave doubts of Shan's efficiency in the direction of survival potential. The Terran started along the pattern of retreat he had laid out to the riverbed. His heart pounded as he ran, not because of the physical effort he was expending, but because, again, from the camp had come that blood-freezing howl. A lighter line marked the lip of the cut in which the stream was set, something he had not foreseen. He threw himself down the to crawl the last few feet, hugging the earth. That very pale luminescence was easily accounted for by what lay below. Shan licked his lips and tasted the sting of sap smeared on his face during his struggle with the luscious. While the strip of meadow behind him now had been spotted with light plants, the cut below showed an almost solid line of them stringing willow-wise along the water's edge. To go down at this point was simply to spotlight his presence for any throb on his trail. He could only continue along the upper bank, hoping to finally find an end to the growth of luminescent vegetation below. Shan was perhaps five yards from the point where he had come to the river when a commotion behind made him freeze and turn his head cautiously. The camp was half hidden and the fire there must be dying, but a twisting, struggling mask was rolling across the meadow in his general direction. Four of all fighting off an attack, the Wolverines, Shan drew his legs under him, ready to erupt into a counter-offensive. He hesitated between drawing stunner or knife. In his brush with the injured throg at the wreck, the stunner had had little impression on the enemy. And now he wondered if his blade, though it was super-steal at his toughest, could pierce any joint in the armored bodies of the Avians. There was surely a fight in progress. The whole, crassily weaving block collapsed and rolled down upon three bright-light plants. Dull sheen of throg casing was revealed. No sign of fur or flesh or clothing. Two of the aliens battling, but why? One of those figures got up stiffly, bent over the huddle still on the ground and pulled at something. The wooden shaft of Shan's spear was wainly visible, and the form on the ground did not stir as that would jerk loose. The throg leader dead. Shan hoped so. He slid his knife back into the sheath, tapping the hill to make sure it was firmly in place and crawled on. The river twisting here and there was a promising pool of dusky shadow ahead. The Bank of Willow Things was coming to an end and none too soon. For when he glanced back again, he saw another throg run across the meadow, and he watched them lift their fellow, carrying him back to camp. The throgs might seem indestructible, but he had put an end to one, hated by luck and a very rough weapon. With that to bolster his self-confidence to a higher notch, Shan dropped by cautious degrees over the bank and down to the water's edge. When his boots splashed into the oily flood, he began to trap down stream, feeling the pool of the water first ankle high and then about his calves. This early in the season, they did not have to fear floods. And hereabouts, the stream was wide and shallow, save in midcurrent at the center point. Twice more, he had a skirted patch of white plants. At once a young tree stood bathed in radius with a pinky stint instead of the usual ghostly gray. Within a haze which tended to drooping branches, flitted small glittering flying things and a scent of his half-open buds was heavy on the air. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant in Shan's nostrils, merely different. He dared to whistle a soft call he hoped would carry along the cut between the high banks. But though he paused and listened until it seemed that every cell in his thin body was occupied in that act, he heard no answering call from the Wolverines. Nor any suggestion that either the animals or Thorvault were headed in the direction of the ramp. What was he going to do if none of the others joined him downstream? Thorvault had said not to linger there past daylight. Yet Shan knew that unless he actually cited a throng patrols flashing after him, he would wait until he made sure of the other's fate. Both Taggy and Tuggy were as important to him as a survey officer. Perhaps more so, he told himself now, because he understood them to a certain degree and found companionship in their undemanding company, which he could not claim from the man. Why did Thorvault insist upon their going on to the seashore? To Shan's mind, his own first plan of holding up back in eastern mountains was better. Those heights had as many hiding places as the steward country. But Thorvault had suddenly became so set on this westward trek that he had given in. As much as the inward rebelled when he took them, he found himself obeying the older man's orders. It was only when he was alone, as now, that he began to question both Thorvault's motives and his authority. Three sprigs of a light boot set in a triangle. Shan paused and then climbed out on the bank, shaking the water from his boots as Taggy might shake some drops from a bird limb. This was a sign they had set to mark Thorvault's move point, but Shan whirled, drawing his stutter. The raft was a dark blob on the surface of the water, some feet further on. And now it was bobbing up and down violently. That was not the result of any normal tug of current. He heard an indigent squeal and relaxed with a little laugh. He now is out of worries about the Wolverines. That made a draw on them all right. Both of them were now engaged in eating, though they had to conduct their feast on the rather shaky foundation of the makeshift transport. They paid no attention as he waited out, pulling at the anchor cord as he went. The wind must have carried his familiar scent to them. As the water climbed to his shoulders, Shan put one hand on the outmost log of the raft. One of the animals snarled a warning of being disturbed, or had that been at him. Shan stood where he was, listening intently. Yes, there was a splicing sound from upstream. Whoever followed his own recent trail was taking no care to keep that pursuit a secret. And the pace as a newcomer was fast enough to spell trouble. He was sure that if the aliens had followed him, both animals would give warning. Save when they had gone wild upon hearing that strange waddle from the camp, they avoided meeting the enemy. But from all sounds the animals had not stopped feeding. So the other was no beetle head. On the other hand, why would Thorvald so advertise his coming unless the need for speed was great? Shan drew trough to mooring cord, bringing out his knife to saw through that tough length. A figure passed a three-spring signal ran onto the raft. Land team, the call came in a horse-demanding whisper, here, cut loose, we have to get out of here. Thorvald lunged himself forward, and together the men scrambled up on the raft. The mangled carcass plunged into the water, dislodged by their efforts. But before the Wolverines could follow it, the mooring vines snapped, and the river current took them. Feeling the raft sway and begin to spin, the Wolverines whined. Crouched in the middle of what now seemed a very frail craft. Behind them, far away but too clear, sounded that eerie howling. Topping the sigh of the night wind. I saw Thorvald gasp, pausing as if to catch full lung pulls of air to back his words. They have a hound. That's what you hear. This concludes Chapter 4, Storm Over Warlock, Chapter 5. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by R.J. Davis. Storm Over Warlock by Andre Norton. Chapter 5, Pursuit. As the raft revolves slowly, it also slips downstream at a steadily increasing pace. For the currents had them in hold. The Wolverines pressed close to Shan until the musky scent of their fur, their animal warmth enveloped him. One growl deep in his throat, perhaps an answer to that wind-borne wail. Hound, Shan asked. Beside him, in dark, Thorvald was working loose one of the poles they had ready to help control the rash voyage. The current carried them along, but there was a need for those lengths of saplings to pin them free from rocks and water-buried snails. What hound the younger man demanded more sharply when there came no immediate answer? The Throgs' Tracker. But why did they import one? Thorvald's puzzlement was plain in his tone. He entered a moment later with some of his usual firmness. We may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound means an attempt to take prisoners. Then they do not know that we are here as pterons on me. Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied to them. They could have brought a hound here just on chance that they might miss one of us in the initial mapa. Or, if they believe we are natives, they could want a specimen for setting. Wouldn't they just blast down pterons on site? Shan saw the dark blocks which with Thorvald's head shaken negation. They might need a live pteron, badly and soon. Why? To upright to camp calving. Shan's momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of a survey procedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of the aliens. The settler transport. Yes, the ship. She won't plan it here without the proper signal. And the Throgs can't give that. If they don't take her, their time's run out before they have even made a start here. But how could they know that the transport is nearly due? When we intercept their calls, they're peer-reduberaged to us. Can they read our codes? The supposition is that they can't. Only concerning Throgs, all we know is supposition. Anyway, they do know the routine for establishing a pteron colony and we can't alter that procedure except as small non-essentials. Thorvald said grimly, if that transport doesn't pick up the proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call in the patrol escort, then exit one Throg base. But if the beetle heads can trick the ship in and take her, then they'll have a clear five or six more months here to consolidate their own position. After that, it would take more than just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock. It will require a fleet. So the Throgs will have another world to play with and an important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and Kilkulcan systems. A Throg base on such a trade route would eventually cut us right out of this quarter of the galaxy. So you think they want to capture us in order to bring the transport in? By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical move if they know we are here. They have too many of those hounds and they don't risk them on petty jobs. I'd hoped we'd covered our trail well, but we had to risk that attack on the camp. I needed the map case. Again, Thorvald might have been talking to himself. Time and the right maps. He brought his fist down on a ramp making the platform tremble. That's what I have to have now. Another patch of light willow stretched along the river bank and as they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance, they could see each other's faces. Thorvald was bleak, hard, his eyes on the stream behind him as if he expected at any moment to see a Throg emerge from the surface of the water. Suppose that thing, Sean pointed upstream with his pin, follows us. What is it anyway? Hound suggested tear him down, but he couldn't stretch his imagination to believe in a working cooperation between Throg and any mammal. A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard with a few other grizzly touches. It's about as close as you can get to a general description and that won't be too accurate because like the Throgs, its remote ancestors must have been of the insect family. If the thing follows us and I think we can be sure that it will, we'll have to take steps. There's always this advantage. Those hounds cannot be controlled from a flyer and the beetle heads never take kindly to foot slugging so we won't have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its masters in rough country, we can try to ambush it. In the dim light, Thorvald was frowning. I flew over the territory ahead on two sweeps and it is a queer mixture. If we can reach the rough country bordering the sea, we'll have won the first round. I don't believe that the Throgs will be in a hurry to track us in there. They'll try two alternatives to chasing us on foot. One, use our energy beams to rake any suspect valley and since there are hundreds of valleys, all are pretty much alike, that will take some time or they can attempt to shake us out with a dumb-dumb should they have one here, which I doubt. The stories of the effects of the Throgs' dumb-dumb weapon were anything but pretty. And to get a dumb-dumb, Thorvald continued as if he were discussing a purely theoretical matter and not a threat of something worse than death, they'll have to bring in one of their major ships, which they will hesitate to do with a cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now is a section we should strike soon after dawn tomorrow. If the rate of this current is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on this side of the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land is bare. Let's have sent a ship over and we could be as visible as if we were sending up flares. How about taking cover now and going on only at night, suggested, Chan? Ordinarily I'd say yes, but with time pressing us now, no. If we keep straight on, we could reach the foothills in about 40 hours, maybe less. And we have to stay with the river to strike across country there without good supplies and on foot is sheer folly. Two days with perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on land, combing from the fliers. With a desert, Chan put out his hands to the Wolverines. The prospect certainly didn't seem anywhere near as simple as it had the night before when Thorwald had planned this escape. But then the survey officer had left out quite a few points which were not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials? Chan wanted to ask, but somehow he could not. After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke, roused out of a vivid dream. A dream so detailed and so deeply impressed in a picture on his mind that he was confused when he blinked at the river bank visible in the half light of early dawn. Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now gliding past him as a raft angled along, he should have been fronting a vast skull stark against the sky, a skull whose outlines were oddly inhuman, from whose eye holes issued and returned flying things while its sharply protruding lower jaw was left by water in color that skull had been a violent clash of blood red and purple. Chan blinked again at the river bank seeing transpose on it still that ghostly haze of bone bare dome, cavernous eye holes and nose slit, banged jaws. That skull was a mountain, or a mountain was a skull, and it was important to him. He must locate it. He moved stipply, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The Wolverines stirred on either side of him. Thorval continued to sleep, curled up beyond. Thorval still clasped in his hands. A flat map case was slung by a strap about his neck. This thin envelope between his arms and his body as if for safe keeping. On a smooth flap was a survey seal and it was fastened with a finger lock. Thorval had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown at the spaceport where Chan had first sighted him. There were hollows in his sheets ending in the high relief those bone ridges beneath his eye sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the skull of Chan's dream. His face was grime, his field uniforms stained and torn. Only his hair was as bright as ever. Chan smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not doubting that he must present an even more disruptible appearance. He leaned forward cautiously to look into the water, but that surface was not quiet enough to act as a mirror. Getting to his feet as a raft bobbed under his shift of weight, Chan studied the territory now about him. He could not mask Thorval's inches, just as he must have a third less bulk than the officer. But standing, he could sight something to what now lay beyond the rising banks of the cut. That grass which had been so thick as a land around the camp had thinned into separate clumps, pale lavender in color, and the scrawniness of stem and blade suggested dehydration and poor soil. The earth showing between those clumps was not of the usual blue, but pallet. Two bleached to gray, while the bushes along the stream's edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into the desert Thorval had promised. Chan edged around the face west. There was lighting up in the sky to sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those distant mountains, mountains whose feet on the other side were resting in seawater. He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separate from his fellows. Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he had seen in his dream was real, that it was to be found on warlock, for sister. Not only was it a definite feature of the landscape somewhere in the wild places of this world, but it was also necessary for him to locate it. Why? Chan puzzled over that with a growing uneasiness, which was not quite clear. Not yet anyway. Thorval moved. The raft tilted and the Wolverines began to growling. Chan sat down, one hand out to the officer's shoulder in warning. Feeling that touch, Thorval shifted. One hand striking out blindly in a blow which Chan was just able to avoid, while with the other he pinned the map case yet tighter to him. Take it easy, Chan urged. The other's eyelids split. He looked up, but not as if he saw Chan at all. The cavern of the veil, he muttered, but scarred. Then his eyes did focus and he set up, gazing around him with a crown. We're in the desert, Chan announced. Thorval got up, balancing on feet, planted a little apart, looking to the faded expanse for the waste spreading from the river cut. He stared at the mountains before he squatted down to fumble with the lock of the map case. The Wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not try to move about too freely on the ramp, greeting Chan with vocal complaint. He and Thorval could satisfy their hunger with a handful of concentrates from the survival kit, but those dry tablets could not serve the animals. Chan studied the terrain with more knowledge than he had possessed two weeks earlier. This was not hunting land, but there remained the bounty of the river. We'll have to feed Taggy and Togi. He broke the silence abruptly. If we don't, they'll be into the river and off on their own. Thorval glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map skin, again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His eyes moved from Chan to the unpromising shore. How? With what? He wanted to know. Then the real urgency of the situation must have penetrated his mental isolation. You have an idea? There's those feasts we found them eating back by the mountain stream, Chan said, recalling an incident of a few days earlier. Rocks here, too. Like those the feasts were hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of them here. He knew that Thorval would be reluctant to work the raft in shore to spare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungry Wolverines. And he did not propose to lose the animals for the officers' whim. However, Thorval did not protest. They pulled the raft out of the main pool of the current, sending it in towards the southern shore in the lee of the clump of light willows. Chan scrambled the shore, the Wolverines after him, sniffing along at his heels while he overturned likely looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The feasts with the rudimentary legs were present and not agile enough, even in their native element, to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of the river shallows. There was also a sleek bird creature with a broad, flat head equipped for paws, rather like a miniature seal which taggy appropriated for sure Chan had a chance to examine it closely. In fact, the Wolverines brought havoc along a half-mile section of bank before the Terran could coax them back to the raft. As they hunted, Chan got a better idea of the land about the river. It was seared. The vegetation dwindling except the banks of things pushing through the parts crowned like blade fingers. Their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amistines coloring of warlocks drawing things. Under the climbing sun, that whole stretch of country was revealed in a stark bareness which at first repelled and then began to interest him. He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff looking out toward the waiting mountains. The officer turned as Chan ordered the Wolverines to the raft and when he jumped down the drop to join him, Chan saw he carried a map strip unrolled in his hand. The situation is not as good as we hoped, he told the younger man. We will have to leave the river to cross the heights. Why? There are rapids bending in a pause. The officer squatted down spreading a strip and making stabs at it within nervous fingertips. Here we have to leave. This is all rough ground but lying to the south there's a gap which may be a pass. This was made from an aerial survey. Chan knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could go wrong. Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from along but there might be unsurmountable difficulties at ground level which were not distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorwald had planned this journey as if he had already explored their escape route and that it was as open and easy as a scroll down tires main transport way. Why was it so necessary that they tried to reach the sea? However, since he had no objection to voice except a dislike for indefinite information Chan did not question the assumption of command not yet anyway. As they embarked and worked back into the current Chan studies his companion. Thorwald had freely listed the difficulties lying before them yet he did not seem in the least worried about there being able to win through to the sea or if he was his outer shell of unconcerned remained uncratch. Before the first day together the young Chan had learned that to Thorwald he was only another tool. To be used by the survey officer in some project was the other belief of primary importance and his resentment of the evaluation was under control so far. He valued Thorwald's knowledge but the other's attitude chilled and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnership of work. Why had Thorwald come back to Warlock in the first place and why had it been necessary for him to risk his life perhaps more than his life if their theory was correct concerning the Throgs' woosh to capture a terror. To get that said a map from the plundered camp when he had first talked to that raid his promised loot had been supplied to fill their daily needs there had been no mention of maps. By all signs Thorwald was engaged on submission and what would happen if he Chan suddenly stopped being the other's obedient underling and demanded a few explanations here and now. Only Chan knew enough about men to also know that he would not get any information out of Thorwald that the latter was not ready to give and that since a showdown coming prematurely would only end in his own discomforture. He smiled royally now remembering his emotions when he had first seen Ragnar Thorwald months ago as if the officer ever considered the likes, dislikes or dreams of one Chan Lanty. No, reality and dreams seldom approach each other. Dreams. On any of those shoreline maps he asked suddenly do they have marked a mountain shape like a skull? He was impressed with his pose. Skull, he repeated a little absently as he so often did in answer to Chan's questions unless they dealt with some currently important matter. A queer sort of skull, Chan said. Just as vividly as when he had first awakened he could picture that skull mountain with the flying things about his eye sockets and that too was odd. Dream impressions of the passing of waking hours. It has a protruding lower jaw and a wave's worst red and purple rock. What? He had Thorwald's complete attention now. Where did you hear about it? That demand followed quickly. I didn't hear about it. I dreamed of it last night. I stood there right in front of it. There were birds or things flying like birds going in and out of the house. What else? Thorwald leaned against his pole his eyes alive avid as if he could pull the reply he wanted out of Chan by force. That was all I remember the skull mountain. He did not add his other impression that he was meant to find that skull that he must find it. Nothing, Thorwald paused, then spoke slowly with a visible reluctance. Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil? A wide green veil strung across it? Chan shook his head just to skull mountain. Thorwald looked as if he didn't quite believe that, but Chan's expression must have been convincing before he laughed shortly. Well, there goes one nice neat theory up and spoke, he commented. No, your skull doesn't appear on any of our maps and so probably the cavern does not exist either. They may both be smoke screens. What? But Chan never finished that query. A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which held the river carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which coasted down into the water as a gray haze coating men, animals and ramps as sighing as snow sighs when it falls. Only that did not drown another cry. A thin cry diluted by the miles of land stretching behind him and yet carrying that long undiluting howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorwald grinned mirthlessly. The hounds on trail he bent to the pole using it to aid the pace of the current. Chan chilled in spite of the sun's heat followed his example wondering if time had ceased to fight another sight. This concludes Chapter 5